Takeover

“We see a lot of cars,” Theresa explained. “Most are filthy. Some have their own supply of cockroaches.”

Jason made a face. “I see. This is the Ohio state database that these prints turned up in?”

“You betcha. And before you ask, we can’t search the country unless we send it to the FBI and wait four or five weeks.”

“Wonderful.”

“It’s not like TV,” Don explained gently. “Moving right along. I superglued the Advil bottle, the Tic Tac container, the Kleenex package, and even that little piece of foil but didn’t get any fingerprints of value. The fumes only brought up a smudge here or there. I used mag powder on the owner’s manual and the envelope and the receipt, since the pulverized metal is better on porous surfaces. And tell Paul,” he added to Theresa, “I hope he appreciates it, because I hate that black powder crap.”

“Duly noted.”

“I got nothing with the mag powder either. CPD called Con-rad’s about the receipt, but it had been paid with cash by Robert Moyers, with the same address, the one he sold to the fashion designer. No one at Conrad’s remembers anything about one sale four years ago. And no one at Sirius will tell me anything about the satellite radio account either, so the cops are running that down.”

“Have you called about the meter on that envelope?”

“The what?”

“Where is it?”

Don moved to a counter and picked up the number ten envelope, now sooty from the mag powder used to process it. “It’s blank. Nothing but the forty-two-cent imprint.”

Theresa peered through the plastic at the inked red markings. “Postage meters are closely regulated. You have to lease them from a dealer authorized by the United States Postal Service. This is a Pitney Bowes; if we call them with this serial number, they should be able to give us the name of the company that metered this envelope.”

Jason listened attentively. “That easy, huh?”

“Not really-they’ll want faxes on letterhead and a few other forms of identification before they’ll release the information. I’ll take the envelope back with me and get some police VIP to call.”

Don thrust a printed form and a pen at Theresa. Chain-of-cus-tody procedures had to be maintained, even under extenuating circumstances, up to and including Armageddon. “Sign here and it’s all yours. Now, follow me.”

She led them into one of the back rooms, pausing at the door.

“That looks-” Theresa stopped.

Don nodded. “Yep.”

“Like Leo. At a microscope.”

“Yep.”

“It’s like he’s working.”

“You betcha.”

“I can hear you, you know.” Her boss spoke without moving his lean face from the ocular lenses of an old polarized light microscope. “I can also hear the percentage of your cost-of-living increase dropping like a sow’s litter.”

Theresa approached with caution, as if a heavy tread could shatter the tableau. “What are you doing?”

“Pollen.”

“What?”

“Remember pollen? The powdery stuff that busy little bees carry from one plant to another, making most of our food supply possible? Identifying them with polarized light was a big deal in the fifties and sixties, tracking dastardly criminals back to the apple tree behind the crime scene.” He replaced a pair of glasses on his nose, long fingers flicking with excess energy. “It’s a dying art, sadly. No one does it anymore.”

“Yeah, like hair comparisons,” Theresa commiserated. “We have a reference collection for pollen?”

“In the basement. Way back in the corner, behind the piece of fence from that torso in the park and the skull- under-glass thing from those satanic wannabes. I’ve probably breathed in enough dust to give me pleurisy.” Indeed, the one-by-three-inch glass slides scattered around on the countertop appeared dusty, and the mounting media had yellowed. The corners on their hard vinyl case had abraded into powder.

“So what is it?”

“Pine.”

Her shoulders slumped. “That’s all?”

“Nothing exotic, sorry. It’s kind of odd to see so much of it, though.”

He skittered his chair back a few feet as Theresa bent her head to the eyepiece, viewing the pink-stained grains. They seemed to have three sections, a central orb with two kidney-shaped appendages. “Why is the amount odd?”

“It rains regularly here, even in summer. That knocks most of the pollen out of the air.”

“So they might be from some other area?”

“But I thought your guy lived here.”

“His car does. Or did. Where would we expect to find a lot of pine pollen?”

Leo began to fit the glass reference slides back into their kit. “I remembered how to use a polarizing microscope, Theresa. That doesn’t make me a botanist. But I’ll see if someone at the Museum of Natural History can help us.”

Leo, volunteering to make a phone call, hunt up a specialist? Tears pricked the backs of her eyelids. Don’t start, she warned herself. Don’t.

Jason’s remote radio chirped at the same time as Don’s Nextel.

Jason put it to his ear, then held it out so they could hear it. “Chris just called them. The receptionist answered.”

She heard Cavanaugh’s voice, full and deep even on the radio’s tiny speaker. “Can I speak to Lucas?”

Don took his call out of the room.

“Chris.” Lucas’s voice sounded much less real than Cavanaugh’s and had an echo to it. The robber had them on speakerphone, so that the hostages could hear every word of the process meant to free them. Theresa wondered if that made Paul feel better or worse. “You’re early.”

“I needed to give you the heads-up. First, though, is everyone in there still doing okay?”

“They’re getting tired and thirsty and will probably have to go to the bathroom soon, Chris, so it would be best if we could take our show on the road. What are you telling me? The chief won’t part with four million dollars that’s not even his?”

“No, they’re still talking about the money. It’s the car. They took it to the medical examiner’s office and-”

“What did they do to it?”

“Nothing. It’s fine. It’s just that the flatbed isn’t there to pick it up yet, so I know it isn’t going to be back here to you by the one-hour deadline. There’s no way. And I didn’t want to wait until the last minute to tell you. Things usually go smoother with that policy-I don’t surprise you, you don’t surprise me, okay? Can we agree on that at least?”

“Too late, Chris. I’m already surprised that you’d risk losing a few of these people because the entire police department is at the Winn-Dixie drinking coffee instead of getting a tow-truck driver off his ass. Makes me think there’s some other problem with the car.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the car.”

“You didn’t cut up the interior, did you? Bobby will be really mad if you did. I mean really.”

A pause.

“Robert Moyers.” Don spoke from the doorway. “CPD just ran him down. He sold the house because he had to serve eight months for a parole violation from the armed-robbery charge. He got out on Friday.”

“Is that Bobby Moyers with you?” they heard Chris ask.

“The one and only!” a distant voice shouted. The other robber. “What’d you do to my car?”

“The car’s fine.” Lucas sounded fainter for a moment, as if his head had turned away from the phone. “Chris says so.”

“I don’t believe them,” the faraway voice continued.